LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘AND you’re sure you don’t mind going to Haslewich to sort out everything...?’

      ‘No, Mum, I don’t mind at all,’ Chrissie assured her mother quietly, exchanging looks over her head with her father as she did so.

      It was no secret in their small, close-knit family unit just how much her younger brother’s irresponsible behaviour and alcoholic lifestyle had upset Chrissie’s mother.

      In the early years of her marriage she had tried her best to help Charles, naively believing that he was genuinely trying to mend his ways. But eight years ago, following a short custodial sentence after he had been convicted of stealing several small items from the home of an acquaintance, which he had later sold to pay for the drink on which he was by then dependent, Chrissie’s mother had decided that enough was enough and had cut herself off from him completely.

      Chrissie understood just why she had felt compelled to do so.

      Her father was a hard-working heart surgeon in a busy local hospital in the small Scottish border town where they lived and her mother was a member of the local town council and involved in several local charities.

      Her brother’s unsavoury reputation and dishonest behaviour was so completely opposite to her own way of life that it was very hard for her to deal with the situation.

      Now though, Uncle Charles was dead and someone, one of them, would have to travel to Cheshire to sort things out, dispose of the small property he had owned in the centre of the town of Haslewich—all that was left from his share of the farmhouse and land that he and Chrissie’s mother had inherited from their parents, and Chrissie had volunteered to take on the task.

      ‘Heaven knows what kind of state the house will be in.’ Chrissie’s mother gave a small shudder. ‘The last time I was there the whole place was filthy and you couldn’t open a single cupboard door without an empty bottle falling out.

      ‘I just wish I knew why he...’ She closed her eyes. ‘Even as a child he was different...awkward...selfdestructive, very different from our father. He was such a kind, gentle man like my grandfather, but Charles... We were never very close as children, perhaps because of the big age gap between us.’ She shook her head.

      ‘I feel guilty about letting you go down to Haslewich on your own but we’ve got this conference in Mexico followed by your father’s lecture tour.’

      ‘Look, Mum, it’s all right,’ Chrissie reiterated. ‘I don’t mind, honestly,

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